Introduction In recent years the demand has risen for diverse work environment to support various activities of workers, and increasing consideration is being made for office space planning where workers can choose their preferred environment by themselves depending on the diversified work contents. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify not only the relationship of activity to workspace, but also the needs for different environment settings emerged by the various individual characteristics of office workers.
Purpose The purpose of this study is to clarify the influence of individual workers' attributes on their preference of environment settings for each activity in the office, by grasping the environment seemed by the worker who is the actual office user by each individual attribute, in order to consider the supporting environment for the diversifying activities in the office.
Methods Office activities were classified into the following nine types according to the results of the preliminary survey, and eight items indicated were selected as attributes of the office worker. A questionnaire was then undertaken with a total of 222 office workers working in four different offices of a certain manufacturing company, and the data were analyzed using multivariate analysis techniques. Eleven items were prepared as environmental elements to explain the office space, concerning "environmental openness ", "remoteness to other workers" and "desk surface height".
Type of activity: routine task, information gathering, convergent thinking, divergent thinking, scheduled meeting, unscheduled meeting, cooperative work, chatting, refreshing
Attributes of office workers: age, gender, smoker, personality (extroversion), workstyle, in-house time per day, existence dedicated desk, branch
* Extroversion: In this study, an extrovert is defined as "a person who is interested in external objects, such as events and others." An introvert is defined as "a person who is interested in the psychological processes of the subject or the subject itself."
Results From the results of this study, the following were indicated as conclusions:
1. The needs for the work environment for each activity were affected by the differences in personal characteristics, such as age, gender, workstyle, smoking preference, and extroversion.
2. The workspace for each activity was classified according to the combination of two points of view, "whether the environment is open or closed" and "whether the remoteness to other workers is near or far."
Conclusion It was revealed that the preference of the work environment for each activity was affected by the differences in personal characteristics. On the other hand, the workspace for each activity could be classified according to the combination of two points of view, including "whether the environment is open or closed" and "whether the remoteness to other workers is near or far." This suggests the possibility that the environment setting of a few variations could satisfy the detailed preference of environment settings of the worker comprehensively.
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